A Vista on marketing mistakes

When Microsoft launched Vista earlier this year, I'd heard all sort sorts of horror stories and frankly considered these to be highly exaggerated and the figment of the jealous imagination of competitors.

How on earth, I thought, could such a successful company produce a product that was supposed to be so full of holes? So absolutely unready. And with such pathetic after sales service.

Faith in Bill Gates

So, in spite of warnings from a lot of people in the know, instead of just settling for good old Windows XP Pro for my new laptop I decided to put my faith in Mr Gates who looked to me to be such a nice chap on TV and who gives away so much of his money to poor people. Hardly a heartless bastard.

But Vista certainly is. Thoroughly heartless and a bastard to work with.

The experience has been shattering. Brief moments of technological delight interspersed with long period of intense frustration and watching more and more money being poured into a bottomless pit of hidden terms and conditions applying at the drop of a hat.

Whatever I tried to do, Windows Vista kept telling me that I couldn't because I didn't have a codec. I had no idea what codecs were and for the first three days I laughed out loud because I couldn't help thinking that a codec sounded like a woman with a cold buying tampons.

Temper tantrums

My laughter turned to muted chuckles and then to desperate intakes of breath and finally full-blown temper tantrums as I discovered that the Vista promise of being able to do everything on my laptop from playing DVDs to synchronising my diary with my phone and PDA was as empty as a teenager's wallet.

For starters, Vista would not allow me to install software for my printer, my scanner and my PDA because they were all more than three years old and according to the terse message that came up on my screen, Vista was a little nervous that if it installed the software it would damage its precious little start-up programme. “Sod your startup programme” has now become favourite family terminology for anything that goes wrong from the dog throwing up to a power outage.

There were lighter moments in this period of extreme trauma. For example, when I plugged my PDA in for the first time and Vista gave me its little sob story about not wanting to damage its frail little system, it did also mention that there was a solution online.

So I went online and was told that there was indeed a solution and that it existed right there in my computer, in the Vista system, in a thing called a device manager which I hurried to as fast as my mouse could take me, only to be told that a solution to the problem I was looking to solve was available online.

Passing the buck

So I tried going round and round hoping that the online destination and my onboard help centre would stop passing the buck and eventually break down under my incessant pressure.

Eventually it did.

It was a bit ill-tempered when it tersely told me to ask a friend or go online to look for some blog written by another poor idiot somewhere in the world who had the same problem as me but who had eventually found an answer.

The bloke down at my local computer shop explained this asking-a-friend-business by saying that it was simply because Microsoft didn't have the answers.

Planned obsolescence

So, off I went to buy another scanner, another printer and another PDA, muttering under my breath about a conspiracy between Microsoft and the printer, scanner and PDA manufacturers to engineer Vista to ensure planned obsolescence and force idiots like me to go and upgrade their peripherals which, at three years old, they believed to be far too old.

Eventually after losing 7.5kg in weight through losing my temper, I got the whole bag of tricks to work.

Next thing I knew was that I had irate emails from all over the place from people telling me they could not open my Word, Power Point or Excel attachments. What had happened was that when buying the new laptop I had also, stupidly, insanely and unthinkingly, bought Microsoft Office 2007.

Office 2007 trap

And without any warning, this new version of Office foisted new versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on me that no-one else could read unless they had Vista as well. The solution offered by Microsoft? Change your defaults for these programmes to automatically ensure that you produce all your material in the 1997 – 2003 version of Office.

It's like finding your brand new BMW can't carry passengers until you go to the junk yard and buy some doors from a trashed 1988 model that can actually open and close.

The final straw was when, just for the heck of it, I tried to play a new DVD and was told that it wouldn't work until such time as I installed a DVD player. Oh, but there was an online solution.

Thanks for nothing, Vista.

So, off I went online and what do you know – there was a solution. But, the problem was I had to buy it, at quite some cost. So once again I spent money, bought the damn DVD player and, lo and behold, when it was installed, Vista told me it was shutting down due to non-compliant software having been installed but that I was not to worry because a solution existed online.

Misleading advertising

Frankly, I think that it is time that the Advertising Standards Authority had a look at the possibility of misleading advertising here. When Vista claims you can surf the Internet, create wonderful documents, synchronise with your mobile devices, play DVD and generally have a technological ball, it certainly doesn't add the proviso that you have to throw away all your old devices that your old steam driven laptop could handle in its stride, and head off and spend a fortune buying more.

The advice I should have taken was to wait until the release of Vista Service Pack #1 which would have a lot of solutions.

Which is a bit like a motor car manufacturer selling a new model and new owners complaining that the only way they could get from A – B was to get out and push the thing. And then being told by their dealer to wait for service pack #1 which would include a gearbox, a fourth wheel, two more shock absorbers and a hole in which to put the nozzle of a petrol pump.

There is no question that Microsoft is a miracle of marketing. Flawed products, shocking backup service, total and complete customer abuse – yet they make billions out of idiots like me that, bloodied and battered, keep crawling painfully back for more.

Not anymore though – next time I will do what all my kids keep telling me to do – move to Apple.